Speaking Up (Continued)

This is a continuation of yesterday’s post on the challenge for submissives to speak up while playing. I’m certainly no expert, but I thought I’d share a couple of pieces of advice I’ve found useful.

Firstly, don’t assume that just because you’re doing a familiar activity, with someone you’ve played with before, you won’t need to speak up. Mental and physical states are always changing. I was caught out in this way one time while being single tailed by Mistress Mara Mayhem in Chicago. We’d played together several before and this certainly wasn’t a new activity for me. Unfortunately on the way to her space, my uber driver’s radio had been describing the gruesome details of the killing of Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi government. It was a disturbing story and for some reason, as we were playing, I couldn’t get it out of my head. My thoughts were racing and I began to feel faint. It seemed stupid. The physical sensations weren’t that intense and my position wasn’t uncomfortable. Yet somehow the combination of the session stress and my messed up thoughts almost pushed me into passing out. Luckily Mistress Mara is an expert and picked up something was going on, giving me a cue to communicate and temporarily stop the scene. I was relying on my history of play to guide me, rather than listening to what my body was telling me at that moment.

The other piece of advice I’d give to submissives is to try and be transparent and informational with your communication, rather than directive. The submissive’s role isn’t to control scene, but to give the domme the information she needs to make the scene work. For example, consider the situation of being put into an uncomfortable bondage position that you’re not sure about. Can you tolerate it? You might not want to immediately say you can’t handle it, but you also don’t want to wait until all the ropes in place and then have to stop everything. Giving informative but neutral feedback like “I can handle this, but probably not for a long period” can help the domme adjust if necessary. Maybe a short period is all she was aiming for. Maybe she’ll dig for more details so she can tweak the position.

Being transparent in feedback doesn’t have to involve words. I always try and make the volume of my cries and moans reflect the intensity of the sensation I feel. If you grit your teeth right up until you’re forced to yell ‘Red!’ then you’ve given the domme nothing to work with and then a command to stop. Giving honest feedback via my yelps helps her fine tune the scene while keeping a natural D/s flow.

Here’s an example of clear communication in the other direction from Yumine Guo. I don’t think the domme has left much doubt about her opinions.